Introduction

It is difficult to determine when the first architectural treatises arrived in viceregal Mexico. However, we know that Antonio de Mendoza (1494–1552), the first viceroy of New Spain, owned a copy of the De re aedificatoria, the architectural treatise by the Italian architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti. Specifically, Mendoza possessed a 1512 edition printed in Paris that he brought with him to Mexico and annotated around the year 1539, making Alberti's one of the first Renaissance architectural treatises to reach the New World in the sixteenth century. Viceroy Mendoza was not only an educated man but was particularly committed to the patronage of civic institutions. He promoted the foundation of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, established in 1553, introduced the printing press in New Spain, and supported the founding of the city of Valladolid, today Morelia, around the year 1543.

Given that Mendoza expressed a marked interest in architecture and urban planning, the advice he left to his successor, Luis de Velasco, acquires particular importance. In effect, around the year 1550, when the end of his tenure was near, Mendoza wrote a letter to Velasco. In the letter, among other issues – such as the state of infrastructure in the viceroyalty, or the state of relations and negotiations with Indigenous communities – Mendoza informed Velasco that concerning ‘the construction of monasteries and public works, there had been many mistakes in their designs, and other matters were not carried out

properly’, because nobody, according to Mendoza, supervised the works. The errors that viceroy Mendoza mentioned, as well as the issue of the arrival of architectural treatises in the New World, both point to the same topic: the introduction and establishment of the classical architectural tradition in the nascent viceroyalty. Indeed, in the letter addressed to Velasco, Mendoza also advised him to attract architects from the Iberian Peninsula to New Spain, in order to elevate the construction quality of civic and religious buildings. Velasco heeded Mendoza's advice, and his mandate saw the arrival of the first professional European architect in the viceroyalty, the Spaniard Claudio de Arciniega (1520–1593). Arciniega, known for his refined classicism, would go on to consolidate a successful architectural practice in New Spain.